Clones
by gogos202
Summary: A group of Clone Troopers and a Padawan are sent to infiltrate a CIS outpost and rescue the prisoners held within. But upon meeting Bounty Hunter their mission is made slightly more difficult.


**Clones**

It's not every day you wake up with blaster-fire all around you. It's not every day you wake up on a battlefield. It's not every day you wake up with effectively a teenager barking orders at you. That, however, is how we woke up this morning. The life of a Clone Trooper is tough one, made even harder by some kid thinking he's all that because he has a laser sword and can move things with his mind. Yet here we are, on some backwater planet being shot at by a bunch of tin cans. My band of buffoons did eventually wake up and boy did they not look pleased. There was Boomer, our demolitions "expert", Target, our sharpshooter, Heavy, the man with the big guns, Mystic, a wacko who thought he could use the Force, Quack, our medic and myself, who everyone called Boss. I was in charge of keeping these idiots alive and believe me, that wasn't always the easiest task. We were by no means what you would call "professionals", but we knew how to take care of ourselves.

Our mission was simple. Keep this Padawan alive (a job I was all too used to). His mission was a little more complicated. He had to lead a bunch of goons (us) into an enemy outpost and clear it out of Clankers, then rescue the prisoners within. His Master, Ouroo Felth, had upmost confidence in his apprentice that he could get it done. Now, I'm no Jedi, but this mission did seem a bit above our pay grade and his ability. The kid was capable sure, but this seemed like a mission for a knight, not a Padawan.

So, there we were, groggy from a restless night's sleep, blaster fire raining down on us from a band of walking toasters. I heard Target curse quite audibly when a bolt went right past his head. We all scuttled to quickly grab our weapons while our "leader" was yelling at us about how some droids were approaching. We noticed.

The droids weren't exactly accurate. They were more firing at the camp than at us specifically. Still, never know when they'll get lucky. Quack yelled at Target to tell us how many there were. Target looked through his scope and wagered about ten. Our camp wasn't exactly hidden, but we were an hour or two away from the outpost. It was odd that a group of droids would've strayed this far out, not heading to the front lines. There wasn't much time to ponder this before another bolt narrowly missed Mystic. Unfortunately for us our camp was at the bottom of a hill, meaning the Clankers had the high ground advantage as they walked towards us.

They weren't too far out but it was still dark out, meaning visibility was low. Boomer, as always, "had a plan". His plans were usually what got us into trouble, but you can't argue with results. His "plan" was quite brilliant. Lob poppers at them till they stop moving. It was short, sweet, and stopped them from firing at us. Target picked off any stragglers. A sigh of relief was heard throughout the camp. Quack asked if anyone was hurt before dropping his rifle and slumping back onto the ground. We were all exhausted. Not just due to the rude awakening, but the forced march the kid had led us on the day before. I like to keep my boys healthy by drilling them each day, but that march was something else. For who knows what reason he refused to let us ride in something to bring us closer. We were marched from home base all the way out here without any break. I'm pretty sure Heavy was considering just shooting the kid in the back and going home, but before that could happen the young Padawan declared that we may now rest.

I would wager we had about 4 hours of sleep before the Clankers began shooting. All of us were putting our weapons back down and beginning to nod off before the kid said

"Come on lads, we've gotta keep moving!". Never in my life have I felt such murderous intent coming from my men (and believe me we've been in some situations). Heavy simply told him to kindly piss off, before turning his back to us. I told the Jedi-to-be that we needed a few more hours sleep before we'd be ready to move again. He looked a bit upset, then declared "I'm the one in charge here, and I say we keep moving, that's an order". I groaned, as did everyone that was awake. Quack kicked Heavy awake "Rise and shine big guy". Heavy groaned, but knew we're out ranked and got to his feet. We picked up our equipment, strapped the rest of our armour on and began to once again move out.

It was about an hour's march before we reached the enemy outpost. It was a square building, with droids standing on the roof acting as lookout. We lay down atop a hill, Target looked through a pair of electrobinoculars and tried to count out how many he could see. The main entrance was guarded, so it seemed like the ladder down from the roof would be the best point of entry. The problem was, how would we get from here, to that roof without being seen? Our leader seemed to have a plan.

He pulled out a length of rope from his bag and gave it to Mystic. He suggested that we sneak round to the back, levitate on of us up to the roof, throw down the rope and pull everyone else up. It was an interesting plan to say the least. Mystic was on board, Heavy and Boomer thought we should just go in all guns blazing, Quack and Target looked to me. I looked to Mystic. "The Force tells me this is the right plan" he said. Sure it did. Well if he was so confidant in the Force, who was I to stop him? I told him that since he was so sure, then he'd be the one flying.

Now, while we were pretty good soldiers, sneaking wasn't exactly our specialty. All guns blazing was more or less how we got things done. I wasn't willing to argue with the kid, so I agreed to his plan. I really should've trusted my gut. We were crawling for a good half an hour in the dirt to get behind this building. Eventually we did. We set our plan into motion. The Padawan picked up our buddy and flung him up. It seemed the crawl had made us stupid, because all of us forgot about the lookouts. We hadn't planned on how to actually deal with them quietly.

"Oh fuck!" Mystic yelled. If that didn't alert everyone to our location, the following blaster fire sure did. The length of rope flew down and we all hurriedly began to climb. Stealth was never really an option. That bastard had gotten lucky and nailed all three lookouts, but we sure as hell weren't naïve enough to believe no one heard us. We all quickly rushed to the ladder. A few droids looked up at us. They were quickly dispatched as all of us fired down on them. We jumped down into the room below us. The kid's lightsaber made short work of the droid that escaped our fire. A large computer sat in front of us, with any luck it'd contain a map of the facility. Heavy sat down and began looking through it. After a minute or so he told us what we needed to know.

Below us was a meeting room. Below that was the main entrance. One direction led to the prisoners, the other to a garage and a panic room. The Panic room was in use, so maybe we'd be able to bag a Separatist leader. The other rooms were fairly unimportant. Heavy laughed. In the garage was an AAT Battle Tank. The plan was simple. Grab the prisoners, arrest (or shoot) whoever was in the panic room, use the tank to blow our way outta here.

The kid downloaded anything useful from the computer onto a datapad. Boomer strapped some det-packs onto the computer and said "Lets go!". We marched down the stairs, blasting anything that moved. Nothing too challenging. Now none of us liked to admit it, but having Jedi (even if he wasn't fully fledged) with us was comforting. He was sharper than us, able to deal with things we missed. Though he was a bit of a pain, he wasn't a bad kid. We reached the bottom floor and divided the team. Heavy, Boomer and Target went the tank and the rest of us went to the prisoners.

We approached where we thought the prisoners would be held. What concerned us was that the door was closed. Every other door had been open when we arrived. I told Mystic to open the door while the rest of us stood against the wall. As he pulled the handle down a voice came from the door.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you" it said. "Now unless you want these people to have holes in their heads, I suggest you go home." Fuck. It didn't sound like a droid, so whoever was behind that door was certainly intelligent. It was probably a Bounty Hunter or a Pirate. While I was certain we could out shoot him, we wanted to return home with zero casualties. Our Jedi spoke up.

"How much for their release?". The voice pondered for a moment.

"I'm not gonna ask for money. Just my freedom out of here. I have a detonator in my hand, any funny movements and I'll blow all of us to Hell."

"Fine, come on out". It was tense. We backed away from the door. It slowly opened. A scruffy looking human walked out, detonator in hand. He slowly walked forward, making sure we could all see his thumb over the trigger. He passed us, then began to run for the exit. Another sigh of relief. We marched into the hostage room and got a look at our targets. Three men were tied up and gagged. The kid said he'd deal with the prisoners and told us to go and meet up with the rest of our team.

As we approached the garage, I could hear Boomer yelling "Get out of there you coward or I'll blow the hinges off this door!". It seemed the panic room was in the garage. I asked who was in there, to which I got a shrug from Heavy. The door was locked, and they were fairly sure _someone_ was in there, there just wasn't an intercom to communicate. Boomer told us that the door was made of some quality material that would be hard to blow through.

"What about the Tank gun?" Quack asked, to which he got a pat on the back from Boomer "I was just about to try". We all evacuated the room as Boomer and Heavy climbed into the tank. After a second or two a deafening boom was heard. We went back in and saw that the door had been blown away. Great! What wasn't so great was the body inside that had been crushed by a flying door. He looked like someone from the Banking Clan, so chances are he was important. Whoops.

Our Jedi friend rushed in after hearing the tank fire, quickly followed by our prisoners. He asked what happened, to which I responded "The usual." I quickly ushered everyone into the tank and opened the garage doors.

We began to fire at all the leftover droids, metal limbs flying everywhere. Boomer detonated the computer and the building behind us went up in flames. We had to swerve to avoid the debris hitting us. It wasn't exactly a pleasant ride, but somehow, we made it out with no injuries and a tank.

"Nice job boys" I said. I turned to the kid, he had a troubled look. "What?" I asked.

"Y'know, it's funny. I inspected that room and didn't see any explosives. Could he have been bluffing?".

Oh fuck.

"Everybody out!" I yelled and hurriedly began climbing out of the tank. My men quickly responded and followed me out, but the kid and prisoners were very confused. "Keep the prisoners away kid!" I said as they got out. "They've got bombs on the-"

Was all I could get out before all three of our prisoners exploded, taking our tank with it. We were all thrown back. I stayed down for a moment. Looking up into the night sky. I wondered what my life would've been like if they put me on Coruscant police duty instead. After pondering for a moment or two I pulled myself up. I saw the tank in flames, my men scattered on the ground and the limbs of our prisoners. Last of all I saw the kid missing his legs, bleeding on the ground. I scrambled over to him, calling for Quack to get over here.

He was barely conscious, bleeding severely and didn't look too great. Quack rushed to his feet and knelt down next to him. He pulled off his pack and pulled out his tools. I'm not a medic, so I wasn't sure exactly what he was doing, but he was doing whatever he could. While he was doing that, I began to pull everyone else to their feet. No one had sustained any serious damage fortunately. We all stood round Quack as he worked. After a little while he looked up and said

"He's stable, but I don't know if he's going to make it."

Great, just great. There was nothing we could do, so we began our march back to home base. We weren't sure if we were able to stop, every minute was precious. If we stopped then the kid might die. We marched in silence for what must have been hours. All of us were ready to drop at a moment notice, but we had to fight on. The tank had gotten us a good ways away, so the march back was shorter than the march there.

I'm not too sure how, but we did manage to walk ourselves back to base. It was all a blur once we got there. Dropping off the kid to medical, explaining what happened then falling into bed. We must've slept through the night and day, because when I woke up it was the following days night. I had to write a report on exactly what had happened before we were clear to have some down time.

The team all sat around the bar, trying our best to get wasted. We were laughing about everything now. Apparently, the kid was in critical condition when we brought him in. He'd recover, but it'd take some time and he'd have to learn to walk using metal legs.

The life of a Clone trooper isn't an easy one. Everyday we're being shot at, or blown up. I'm not really sure why we're fighting. I'm not really sure if it'll ever stop. All I do know is that me and my team are going to have to carry on going on these stupid missions until we're all dead. I thought to myself, maybe our next mission will be a little better? I was wrong.


End file.
